Through four fascinating essays, this illuminating and image-rich catalogue describes the political and social role of feasts and feasts in the Levant, from the Early Bronze Age about 5,000 years ago to the Babylonian and Persian periods about 2,500 years ago, including a glimpse of contemporary culinary diplomacy.

In addition, the reader is offered 15 short essays on selected objects and various aspects of feasts and feasts. For dessert, five of the oldest recorded recipes in human history, some 3,800 years old, coined in cuneiform on clay tablets in Mesopotamia (Iraq).

The feast as a social and political tool and shared feasts in the archaeological finds were written by the exhibition’s curator, Nurith Goshen. On images of feasts in the Near East – Janling Fu from Harvard University, on descriptions of feasts in ancient texts – Stefania Ermidoro of the Institute of Heritage Science in Rome, and on ancient recipes by independent scholar Nawal Nasrallah.